Saturday, December 27, 2003

It's that time again...

Yes, Mac OS Rumors is back with yet another installment of questionable "reporting" and that means it's time for...
(Now with animated title!)

Tonight's Episode: Those fake images look just like that Alpha we were using! (Really!)

Well, things started innocently enough. MOSR was predicting the upcoming release of iTunes 5 (which, quite frankly, is possible - though not necessarily likely). The source: this supposed iTunes 5 screenshot over at Apple-X.net. Take a good look at it (see if you can spot five things that don't make sense in the picture).

Found (at least) five things?
How about these five:
1. The graphite "red-yellow-green" controls in the upper-left-corner of the window don't match the aqua checkboxes and list-view heads.
2. The "record" button doesn't match the other lower-right-corner buttons.
3. The text in the beats text box is cut off.
4. The equalizer and scroll-thingy are graphite (which does match the other graphite, but then doesn't match the list's aqua...).
5. (Here's the tricky one): The beats seem to be set at 141 bps. That's "Beats Per Second" (even the Macarena wasn't that fast).

How'd you do?
The point is, that screen shot's fake. Really fake (in all fairness, it looks good at first glance). MOSR is even now admitting that it's fake. The problem: MOSR claimed (initially) that the screenshot looked a heck of a lot like an Alpha of iTunes 5 they claimed to have played with a couple of months ago (yep, Apple just hands out Alphas of unreleased iLife applications after the tour of the "Room O iPhones" down in Cupertino).

So wait a sec. That screenshot is obviously real because you say you used an Alpha that looked just like it, except the screenshot is fake, but you did use that Alpha, but you don't have any screenshots of that, except for that screenshot that's real, well it's actually fake, but you said it was real, but apparently it isn't, but then it sure must've looked a heck of a lot like that Alpha you used a couple months back (that you don't have any screenshots of).

R-rriiiiiight....

Of course, MOSR has since edited their original report from today. It still claims that they played with an Alpha of iTunes 5, but it's missing the part that says the Apple-X screenshot looks like that Alpha (that's not the first time they've changed something they wrote after it's been proven completely fake).

Then again, what did I expect from MOSR? Accuracy?!

That's right, I mentioned the Macarena in an article. How's that for something I should never ever, ever do again?